Designing websites for people - Needs some ideas/advice

[Baronz]

Ok this is what I'm thinking, this is my idea so far.

I'm thinking of starting up a small home business type of thing where I would build custom websites for customers and their businesses, either that or just personal pages.

I'm thinking that i would advertise my services locally in the paper (easiest way to get to people without spending alot of $). Have people contact me by e-mail and then have them pay me by some means, either for monthly updates or just for me to do the whole page and let them update.

This is where I need some advice, how would i have people pay me for something like this? Having the customer mail me a check/money order would be sufficent i suppose, taking into account that I would be doing things locally.

Another question I have is, would i need to offer hosting for people's websites as part of the service I am doing?

Lastly, would I need to know PHP or some sort of coding besides HTML to create sites that people may want? (IE stores and such who need databases)

I use dreamweaver exclusively for design, and some java/html added in the code manually for what dreamweaver cannot do, and I am very competent in photoshop for doing the the graphic design for the site. I just dont know anything like PHP. DO the majority of people wanting websites these days require that it use something like PHP? Or can I get by with just a plain menu-driven site via html?

Any other advice on how I could go about this? Thanks a bunch to anyone who can help me on this, i know its alot of questions

 

[rawoutput]

Average business people probably don't care about Java, PHP, ASP, etc etc unless they read too much PC magazine. They just want a solution that works. Talk to them and find out what they want; if its e-commerce then make an e-commerce package with either PHP or ASP. Do you have a portfolio or example sites you could show me? I run a business myself and am always looking for people to contract work out to.

-Raw to the O

 

[Parrotheader]

If you're going to do this as a primary means of income you definitely need to sit down with a lawyer or accountant before you do anything and let them give you some practical business/legal advice. They probably wouldn't charge you much at all for that. You'll need to make sure you have your bases covered as far as contracts go and you'll also need to make sure everything's on the 'up and up' tax-wise. There's also the issues of intellectual property and what you need to do/be aware of.

As far as hosting goes, nearly every city has a couple of good low-cost colo facitlities. Find out where those are and see what packages they offer. That's usually better than having to deal with the hassles of maintaining your own server facilities (assuming your clients get decent amounts of traffic.)

Most clients don't really care about/need advanced programming for their sites. However, if you find you're coming across a lot of these you might want to see if you can find any contacts you can use to help you out from time to time.

There's still quite a solid market out there for freelance web work. My company does it professionally for larger clients, but a lot of the guys I work with also do freelance stuff for smaller things on the side. It's a great way to earn extra money. I've recently partnered up with my coworkers on their freelance stuff and now offer the marketing services (mostly SEO stuff) to round out our offerings giving the client a nice all-in-one package. Good luck.

 

[Baronz]

<< Average business people probably don't care about Java, PHP, ASP, etc etc unless they read too much PC magazine. They just want a solution that works. Talk to them and find out what they want; if its e-commerce then make an e-commerce package with either PHP or ASP. Do you have a portfolio or example sites you could show me? I run a business myself and am always looking for people to contract work out to.

-Raw to the O >>




Thats good to hear, as I don't know much about coding, although I can make a site look amazing and have it flow very nicely with just HTML I'm sure there are a lot of businesses around here that wouldn't require anything too complicated for their needs.

As for what I've done,

Heres two old defunct sites i did that were on this server, they are just basically templates to the sites and do not have any content in them:

Old personal website i did, some content but other areas won't work

Computer store i did for friend, never used it, about 1/4 done


I'd apprectiate any work i could get

 

[Baronz]

<< If you're going to do this as a primary means of income you definitely need to sit down with a lawyer or accountant before you do anything and let them give you some practical business/legal advice. They probably wouldn't charge you much at all for that. You'll need to make sure you have your bases covered as far as contracts go and you'll also need to make sure everything's on the 'up and up' tax-wise. There's also the issues of intellectual property and what you need to do/be aware of.

As far as hosting goes, nearly every city has a couple of good low-cost colo facitlities. Find out where those are and see what packages they offer. That's usually better than having to deal with the hassles of maintaining your own server facilities (assuming your clients get decent amounts of traffic.)

Most clients don't really care about/need advanced programming for their sites. However, if you find you're coming across a lot of these you might want to see if you can find any contacts you can use to help you out from time to time.

There's still quite a solid market out there for freelance web work. My company does it professionally for larger clients, but a lot of the guys I work with also do freelance stuff for smaller things on the side. It's a great way to earn extra money. I've recently partnered up with my coworkers on their freelance stuff and now offer the marketing services (mostly SEO stuff) to round out our offerings giving the client a nice all-in-one package. Good luck. >>



Nope, I'm not looking to this as a primary source of income. I'm only 16, and need a decent source of income to save up for a car etc. I have all the skills to do this kind of stuff, and I can make alot more than the average 16yr old could with what I know, and its alot better than working at mcdonalds.

And there are a few hosts around here that i can get hosting with, if someone wanted a site, and the domain was free I'd have no problem setting it up and having a running site. I'd just have to charge them for hosting of course, but I'd just be paying it to the company with hosting.

I also do know some people who know PHP etc., and if i needed some low-level code to do something I couldn't in HTML, I can easily get some code/advice on how to do it.

Thanks for the help so far guys

 

[Baronz]

Little bump

 

[BigFatCow]

ive heard php is really easy to learn...

 

[lowtech1]

Most business don't need dynamic web page, therefore you should stick with static pages. Some DHTML/SSC would be fine. You could go as far as using XML pages & flash, but that kind of thing is not needed. Keep it simple & update their web page frequently is the best thing you can do for them.

 

[Parrotheader]

The best thing to do is do a few sites for free or for a barter deal. That way you can build up your portfolio and won't force you into accepting cut-rate pricing just to prove yourself. Then you can start to charge people fees once you show them what you could do for them. Don't expect anything huge just yet as a lot of people will be a bit wary due to your age. I'm not trying to be discouraging, just telling you the truth. If you do enough portfolio building pieces though you might be able to get a few decent little jobs here and there.

I personally love barter deals whenever they're available and attractive enough. I recently signed on to a great one with another person at our agency. She (and some friends of hers) own a beach house in a very exclusive community on the Gulf coast which they rent out as an investment piece. One of my other co-workers built her web site and now I'm going to do the online marketing. Instead of charging her a fee, I'm just going to have access to the house for a week later this year. And it looks like this could be an ongoing deal each year. So basically, I'll have my own timeshare (in an area which would ordinarily be way out of my price range) and all it will cost me is a little bit of my spare time. I don't have to clock-watch and worry about charging her any additional money. It's great. And I've already landed her several long-term rentals that would have more than made up for my costs if I'd charged her a straight fee anyway.